Novels are Hard Work

When I started this blog, I decided that I wasn’t going to post for the sake of posting. Hopefully this is as close as I will come to breaking that rule…

I’ve had plenty of topics to blog about lately, but not much time to write. So when I have had time, I have focused almost entirely on finishing my novel. I realized tonight that one of the motivations behind starting this blog was to discuss the process of writing… so if I only post when I have time to craft something witty or poignant, then I will present a skewed version of my reality. This is the stuff that happens between those moments where inspiration meets available time. This is where I throw words at the page and then click “Publish.” Hey, it’s just a blog, after all…

I have reached the stage of my novel — is this my third draft or my fourth? I’m not sure I even know anymore — where it has become a seemingly endless slog. I could have copied the name of my last post, The Honeymoon’s Over, for this one… because that definitely applies to my novel. There are moments when I feel like I can’t open my manuscript again… I just want it to be done. But that wouldn’t be fair to myself, to the story, or to all those fictitious characters running around in my head. I’ve invested a lot of time over the past two years with the hope that I will craft a story worth reading… and I’ve also implicated two editors in the process. To stop now would be an injustice.

So I plod on, understanding that the work will become even harder as I get closer to the finish line. I realize now that writing a novel is much harder than any other writing project I have ever done — and I have completed a lot of documents in my life. I know that everything is relative — I can only imagine the work that has gone into more research-driven books than mine, like historical fiction novels or non-fiction tomes; or fantasy/sci-fi novels where entire worlds have to be constructed before a story can even be written. But no matter the subject, no matter the scope… I now have more respect for anyone who has completed a novel.

And then there’s that wee little issue of publishing and promoting my work… I had best forget about that for now, or I’ll never get this manuscript finished.